


Boys Inside, The

by thebasement_archivist



Category: The X-Files
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-05-29
Updated: 2002-05-29
Packaged: 2018-11-20 21:30:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11343525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebasement_archivist/pseuds/thebasement_archivist
Summary: Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived atThe Basement, which moved to the AO3 to ensure the stories are always available and so that authors may have complete control of their own works. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address onThe Basement's collection profile.





	Boys Inside, The

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Basement](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Basement), which moved to the AO3 to ensure the stories are always available and so that authors may have complete control of their own works. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [The Basement's collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thebasement/profile).

Boys Inside, The

## Boys Inside, The

#### by Fox Mulder

From: "Fox Mulder" <theblack> Subject: [RatB-K] FIC: The Boys Inside, by Fox Mulder (Or The Death of Kolyai Part I) Date: Sunday, September 02, 2001 8:21 PM DISCLAIMER - The X-Files "characters" belong to Chris Carter - at least, that's what I have to say. I'm really me, and Kolyai was real. Some of this story was fictionalized, some of it wasn't. Have fun trying to decide which is which. Enjoy. 

* * *

The Boys Inside, or, the Death of Kolyai, part I 

I can hear Krycek breathing behind me as my feet carry me up the stairs, one step at a time; my eyes are shrouded in blackness by the dark glasses I'm wearing but I let my body melt into the shadows, drift, trusting my muscles to guide me where my eyes are no longer useful. I should take them off, the glasses; wearing them upon the last steps of this journey, this confrontation, is not only ridiculous but deadly. 

But I don't. I half-close my eyes instead, feeling the straps across my thighs and shoulders rubbing, pulling. My heart is pounding just below my throat, and I can feel my fingers, my muscles, beginning to twitch, to clench, to get ready. This is it, the last stop, the end of the line. No more child murders, no more nightmares, no more wondering in the dark if I could have done one thing, just one more thing. If I could have saved him. Because that's what I'm here to do. 

Save Nikolai from himself. 

The door. I pause, draw a breath. Run a hand up my right thigh, feeling warm leather, cool metal, trembling muscle. I say nothing to Alex. There is no time for words, no more time to second-guess, to plan, to think. I saw the movie. So did he. Free your mind. 

I am insane, but there is no fear. 

I step through the door and he turns, then, across the room, and there is a moment of deadly silence as his blue eyes size me up, record, remember me. Nikolai Chenderovich, man of my nightmares. Alex's big brother. Kolushka. Tall and wiry in his black and leather, we could be characters in a comic book - only at the end of this issue, nobody's a hero. We just go on. 

"You," he breathes, and smiles. "Mulder." 

A pause, considering. "Chorny lisa." 

I step up the final stair then, and - against everything I know and have believed - I can feel myself smiling back. I am enjoying this, for Christ's sake, the adrenaline pounding in my body, and I can feel myself getting hard, the leather straps caressing my body. I am ready - truly - and the realization makes me giddy. I smile wider, and reach for the front of my long black coat. Spreading it like a flasher, slowly, I let him see - the guns strapped to my thighs, the .22 on my ankle. And, there, on my left calf, the knife. Black and steel and eight inches of pure Bolvangar death, taken off him like a trophy the last time we met and brought here, now, like destiny. 

Kolyai's smile becomes a grin. 

"So that's how you want to play it?" 

All at once I can see his good right hand moving  
toward the back of his  
shirt and I spin  
so slowly  
and the air is filled suddenly with the reek of cordite and we revolve slowly, so slowly, like a dance my own .45 up and out as I move feeling a tug and then another against the fabric of my coat and a faraway stinging across the back of my right hand as I hold it up and out, sideways like a vigilante in a bad movie and I can see his eyes, now, flashing and he shrieks at me "Don't you ever fucking _die_?" and I feel nothing but time slowing down like a reel and suddenly he's there, in my face, just like all the dreams and we're standing together like brothers, yes, like brothers and the click registers in my head as I realize he has one hand on my upper arm and that my left is on his  
shoulder as my gun jerks, and clicks on an empty chamber and I am watching his eyes, now, not a scratch on him but he's not grinning now, not anymore. 

But we've just begun. 

"Your gun's empty," I tell him, smiling. 

"I don't need it," he says simply, and he steps back and tosses the empty piece to the floor. 

I move back, watching him, breathing. All right. I reach up slowly and pull the dark glasses from my face, tossing them to the floor along with my gun. This is the truth, now, this is where it gets real. Touching him, being touched, and if I'm going to take him down, take him out, it's going to be with nothing but my hands. I should have known that from the first, should have _felt_ it. Everything has slowed down, slowed to the rhythm of my breathing, and although I know Alex is lurking, there, in the shadows, I hope he doesn't come forward too soon. I am all right, and I can handle this. It is my time. 

I launch myself at Kolyai. 

Although he is ready for me and bigger than I am, he is still taken by surprise that I - Fox Mulder! - would leap at him. I catch him around the chest and duck as he swings a thick fist at my face. Under his arm and around, up with an elbow into his ribs and another up into his jaw. He backs away, panting, and we circle. 

"Well," he says, softly, with something like pleasure in his voice. 

Something like pride. "Looks like you've learned something since last time, boy." 

"I'm not your boy," I tell him - like I'm talking to a four-year-old - and drop to my knees as he charges me. I feel him hit and we roll  
backwards in a tangle of  
fists and limbs and I feel his  
knuckles crack the side of my face and I shake it off moving sideways like a dance hearing nothing  
but our breathing and his sharp  
exhales and I sink a shot  
and then another and he is gripping my  
hair and I roll under his arm  
and pop up shedding my black  
coat in one motion like a  
bird on the wing and crouching  
circling aware of my newfound  
grace and not noticing anything no  
pain and when my eyes focus we're circling each other again, me in my tight black jeans and my long-sleeved shirt - that seems to be damp around my waist somewhere but I toss it off as a curiosity - the straps loose now, all my holsters empty but the one containing the knife - _his_ knife -, both of us crouched now like boxers, like street fighters, both of us watching each other for the hole, the weakness, and I know now that _he_ knows I am serious, that I am here to kill him. That I don't believe I _can_ be killed, fatal fallacy but it has kept me up and alive so far. I knuckle blood out of my right eye and watch him, and begin to smile. 

"Are you having fun yet?" I ask him. "I am." 

With a growl, he leaps at me. 

I am ready for his charge, but his weight is more than I expect and he is good, so good. He kicks one of my feet out from under me and follows it with an immediate left to my face, and I stumble. A strong blow to my chest, my ribs, and I fall with him on top of me. It knocks the wind out of me, and I fight for breath as I shake off his blows, jerking from side to side. He pulls me around and over with an arm across my throat, and I kick and squirm underneath him, fighting against the black dots that begin to swarm across my vision almost immediately. He pulls my head back, slaps me hard across the mouth, and then brings the side of his hand down across my face, my nose exploding with a crimson rush of pain. 

"Are you having fun yet?" he asks, driving a knee into my guts. "Because I am." 

I have had _enough_. 

With a howl of something that is partly pain, partly exertion, but mostly just pure exultation, I shove Kolyai over backwards and roll out from under him, gasping for air and shaking my head to clear it. I duck as he charges me again, catching him on the chin with my elbow, and get to my feet just in time to catch him in the face with one, two, three blows and make him stagger backward. I pivot and spin and there he is again, and he crashes into me with all his moving weight. I catch him, and together we slam into the knee-high railing behind us and roll over it as one man, smooth and slow and _so_ like a movie. But when we hit the ground I swing on him again, hard, no fear but a kind of finality, and when I stand up, breathing hard for the first time, Kolyai is still lying there. 

_This is the end_ , I think. 

At last. 

I turn toward Alex, turn to reach for his hand, the knife, I don't know. But before I can turn more than halfway, Kolyai comes alive. He kicks out for my feet with a snarl of fury, and somehow - God only knows, how - I skid out of his way. Whirling on my left foot, I lean my body toward the railing and all in one motion, I lay my palm flat on the wood, pull my legs in, and propel myself up and over on one hand. Even as I'm doing it I can't believe it -*I'm Fox Mulder, how the hell can _I_ do this?* - but it is in a distant way; in the forefront of my mind is only a gleeful exultation, a feeling of flying, a feeling of triumph. I feel as though all my muscles, every inch of skin, is working like a hologram, a projection. Like I'm not really here. .. like I've mastered the Matrix. 

NeoFox. 

Kolyai circles me again, half-grinning, half-snarling, and I lean forward, crouching. I reach up to wipe more blood out of my eyes, but there is no pain, no fear, only a gut-deep insistence that this is right, this is the groove, that I am still _alive_. I reach down - holding his eyes, always holding his eyes, that is the one thing I learned from both Alex and the basement, if I drop his eyes he'll have my throat, no questions asked - and in one motion the knife whickers out of the holster strapped to my left calf. Left hand to right, to left, and the grin fades from Kolyai's face faster than I ever could have imagined. He begins to smile again as I spin the knife between my fingers, up and over, showing off now, but I can afford to. Up and over again, and as it is coming around I suddenly feel myself losing it, losing control, and my mind flashes in a brilliant surge of blue light *make it look like it's on purpose, God, Mulder, make it look like it was on purpose or you're dead!!* Slick and slippery, the black steel blade flying suddenly through my fingers and I _go_ with it, close my eyes in the moonlit dark and just go with it, and as the knife skids from my fingers I lean with it and swing my arm around. 

The knife clatters to the floor- 

-and Nikolai's smile is wiped from his face like magic. I can't believe it but it worked, he believes it was on purpose, and anyone who is crazy enough to toss away their only weapon in the face of an enemy bigger than they are either has a hell of a plan or has lost their mind. I see the hole, see his hesitation, and I make my final charge. He swings a fist at me and up comes my  
arm in a slick smooth  
block and I duck his next  
swing and one two three into his  
face into the scar, into that  
fucking grin and we spin each other like dancers I feel his blows landing and everything is slow, so slow and he's really  
coming at me now really trying to kill me but I am not afraid I can't even seem to find that final rush of adrenaline as we grapple and fall and roll, full of punches and kicks and knuckle-filled fists and all of a sudden (like breathing liquid, like the air has become thick and slow) Kolyai is behind me and I turn to roll out of his way and his huge hand comes swinging down at me and cracks me across the left ear so hard blackness fills my vision. My ears are ringing, the left one slowly leaking blood, and my nose is bleeding now, too. When my vision begins to clear I am lying stretched out on the floor, trying to shake my head and unable to because of the pain. Kolyai is behind me, hovering over me, and I hear a skittering clatter. I can feel him breathing - fuck, I can feel him _grinning_ \- and something in my brain says _Okay, Mulder, time to get up now. Get UP!!_ Okay, all right, good idea - great idea - I think, and my brain sends the signals to my body: roll out of the way, get up, duck, get behind him. Get up. 

My feet twitch spasmodically. That is all. 

Oh shit, I have time to think, is _that_ what it feels like? Like a fish out of water, like all those stories - thousands of them - that I've read, my brain has lost communication with my feet. Like being paralyzed, like being terrified, like somewhere in the vicinity of my spine the signals have been shut down. 

_Get UP!!_ My mind shouts. 

Okay, say my feet, and twitch again. My body does nothing at all. I feel a sharp point at the back of my neck, and with an almost superhuman effort I cry out and roll a foot or so to one side. The cry - halfway -becomes a scream; Kolyai had embedded the point of the stiletto in the back of my neck and, as I rolled, torn a three-inch gash in the skin. I lie there, unable to move, bleeding. 

"You know what?" Nikolai says, almost conversationally. "You're going to die now." 

_Yes_. I _am_. I shut my eyes. 

Waiting. 

I hear a sudden rustle and lie there, paralyzed; hidden by the shadows, I hear Kolyai cry out, see a pair of shadows rolling to one side. I hear garbled words that sound very much like " _You_? How _could_ you, after all-" And then a thick _thwack!_ sound, and then nothing at all. 

The room is silent. 

And then I see something that I can't believe - it is a hand, reaching for me in the darkness. 

One hand. 

Krycek's hand. 

He pulls me to my feet, cradling me with the prosthesis while he holds me up with the other. I feel blood being wiped from my face. 

"Alex. . .?" I stammer, feeling beginning to come back to my body - slowly. 

"It's all right," Alex says, his black glove smooth on my skin. "It's over. He's dead." 

* * *

* * *

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